Hearing aids have a microphone, amplifier and a speaker. They pick up sound through the microphone, amplify the resulting acoustic signal and produce sound from the speaker, so that a hearing-impaired listener can have improved hearing. Even so, the wearer of a hearing aid may have trouble hearing speech from a distant talker. A separate wired or wireless microphone may be placed closer to the talker and can therefore more strongly pick up the talker's speech, but ambient noise may obscure the picked up speech or can make speech comprehension challenging.